It's me.

Skeptical Empiricism

This website used to be under the domain skepticalempiricism.com. I moved it to bensima.com in 2018 because I didn’t think there was any point in keeping it separate from myself.

“Skeptical Empiricism” is a phrase I found years ago in Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan. I thought at the time, and still think today, that it rather perfectly describes a conservative-yet-intellectual approach to forming ideas, evaluating data, and making decisions in the real world. It’s a practical, unassuming philosophical system that pairs nicely with the scientific method.

This blog is nothing but an empirical river of my erudition and thinking. It’s my learning journal, for lack of a better term. I share it with the world not because I think it is particularly important, rather I think any act of learning is inherently communal. You cannot learn without a teacher, and it is said that the best way to learn is to teach. So learning and teaching are interdependent. Comments are always open here, so as you learn from my posts you can teach me something as well.